ENDANGERED

An animated/live action feature film

based on the award-winning novel by Eliot Schrefer

The gripping story of 14-year-old Sophie and her quest to save the orphan bonobo that she buys at the side of the road in Kinshasa, in war-torn Congo. Her quest becomes life-threatening as the sanctuary housing her mother’s precious bonobos is attacked by rebels and Sophie must run for her life – with Otto – the newly-named bonobo clinging to her back. They are both endangered.

Images from the short Endangered, to be released soon.

Image from A Crime on the Bayou, featuring Gary Duncan.

A CRIME ON THE BAYOU

A documentary feature film

In development with HBO

The lives of a young black fisherman, a white despot and a New York Jewish lawyer converge on the Louisiana bayou in 1966 around a seemingly insignificant criminal case. A simple misdemeanor hijacked by white supremacy and fueled by institutional racism, inspires a black firm and the white Jewish Lawyer they are mentoring to appeal a judge's guilty verdict all the way to the Supreme Court. But it is the noble Gary Duncan who fights for Justice in dangerous Jim Crow Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, who is our hero. By not taking a plea, as most black men did in the highly segregated parish, he bravely risks his life and livelihood to do what is right. As a Result, Duncan v. Louisiana changes the right to Trial by Jury from an arbitrary state directive to the law of the land.

TANNY

A narrative feature film

Based on the documentary Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq.

Image from original documentary Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clerq

Photo credit: Jerome Robbins, courtesy of Jerome Robbins Foundation

There are few more haunting stories in in the world of ballet than that of the mysterious Tanaquil LeClercq. A ballerina at the height of her career, suddenly stricken with polio, never to walk or danceagain. But not just any ballerina; the muse to George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, arguably the twogreatest choreographers in 20th Century America. She seduced them as a dancer and as a woman, asshe did her audiences – no one was more beautiful on stage and more mesmerizing. She had fame, loveand adoration until it suddenly all stopped. Tanny danced until she collapsed; she was rushed to thehospital, was in an iron lung, near death.Tanaquil Le Clercq would never dance again, nor would she ever inspire these giants. It is the way Tannycopes with not only the loss of her legs, but the loss of their love, that is the drama of our story. Itsheartbeat is Tanny courage, her singular wit and determination to forge an independent life no longerreliant on these artists to make her whole. She is a powerful inspiration to anyone who knows her story.